London will be overwhelmed by covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS England briefing
London’s hospitals are less than two weeks from being overwhelmed by covid even under the “best” case scenario, according to an official briefing given to the capital’s most senior doctors this afternoon.
NHS England London medical director Vin Diwakar set out the stark analysis to the medical directors of London’s hospital trusts on a Zoom call.
The NHS England presentation, seen by HSJ (see slides below story), showed that even if the number of covid patients grew at the lowest rate considered likely, and measures to manage demand and increase capacity, including open the capital’s Nightingale hospital, were successful, the NHS in London would be short of nearly 2,000 general and acute and intensive care beds by 19 January.
The briefing forecasts demand for both G&A and intensive care beds, for both covid and non-covid patients, against capacity. It accounts for the impact of planned measures to mitigate demand and increase capacity.
An item I've not yet posted by Zeynep Tufekci at The Atlantic puts forth the case that demolishes my cautious optimism about the high-infectiousness SARS-CoV-2 variant: higher infectiousness, unlike higher mortality, exhibits exponential growth rather than a linear trend increase, and hence is actually a far greater problem.
